for sword was drawn Another example of an indicative is the addition of a line signifying “roots” to the bottom of the kanji for tree 木 to form the new kanji 本, meaning root or origin, as we saw above.
Placing the “indicative” in different sections of the pictograph will change the aspect that is emphasized, and thus the meaning of the new kanji. For example, adding an indicative to a tree 木 down around the roots, as noted above, gives the meaning root 本. Adding the same line as an indicative among the branches of the tree 未 emphasizes that the tree is still growing and producing new branches, and gives the new kanji the meaning of still growing or immature or not yet. Adding instead a slightly longer line closer to the top of the tree 末 emphasizes the top of the tree and makes a new kanji meaning tip or end or extremity.
To remember the meanings of the kanji as they are used in Japanese, there is no need to remember whether an element is a pictograph, a symbol, an indicative, or an ideograph, or indeed to trace the permutations of the original Chinese drawing of a specific kanji down to its form today. That is best left to the scholars, who themselves still find different theories about the origins. Rather, your objective is to memorize the meaning of the present-day kanji by using your own understanding of what the pictures in the ideograph meant to the Chinese who first drew it.
For example, the kanji 口, as described above, means mouth. When a line is drawn through the middle of the mouth it forms the new kanji 中 meaning center or middle. Some scholars say this form is an indicative, the added line in the center emphasizing center. Other scholars say it is a picture of a flagpole with another pole drawn through its center. Some say it is a pictograph of an arrow piercing the center of a target. Others say it is a board with a line through the center or a box with a line down the middle.
At this stage of your study, it is important only to remember that 中 means center or middle. Whatever symbolic connection you make between 中 and center that helps you to remember the connection between them is the mnemonic that you should use.
I have given my interpretation, based on a composite of opinions among Chinese, Japanese and Western scholars, of the meanings of the pictures in each kanji. The purpose is to help you remember the 400+ kanji in this book. If you find an interpretation of the pictures which better helps you to remember the kanji, then that is the interpretation you should use.
There came a time when the early nations of the Western world decided to give up pictographic writing for something simpler. They began to use a phonetic system in which a specific picture stood for a certain sound instead of standing for a certain meaning. Their scholars arbitrarily selected some pictures to stand for the sounds they used in their language and abandoned all the other pictures. One of the phonetic systems thus developed was, of course, the forefather of the English alphabet.
The pictograph the Egyptians selected for the sound of A was cow
The Egyptian pictograph for eye
The simple Chinese pictographs can be grouped into a few major categories. Most pictographs were drawn from objects the Chinese saw around them. Many were drawings of human beings in different shapes and postures, and of parts of the human body. Natural objects such as trees, plants, rocks, the sun, birds, and other animals were another major source. Weapons, which in that era meant only hand-held weapons like bows and arrows, knives, axes, spears, and lances, also were a source. Other important categories were houses and buildings, kitchen utensils, and clothing.
After the Chinese had invented all the characters they needed at the time, their next step was to standardize the kanji into a form easy to read and write. Over a period of about 2,000 years, they did this by simplifying and re-proportioning the pictures so they would all be about the same size, fit into the same-sized square, and be uniformly written throughout the country.
This was done by squaring circles, straightening some lines and eliminating others, and abbreviating or eliminating the more complicated portions of the picture. The shapes of some were changed slightly to make them more aesthetic or to make them easier and quicker to write. In fact, when the characters first took on their modern form they were called “clerical script” and were the form followed by the government bureaucrats in their record-keeping.
Some of the changes differed according to where in the square the element would be put. For example, the pictograph fire
When the kanji for person 人 is added at the left of a composite kanji, it is generally written 亻, as in 休, a person next to a tree, meaning to rest. When a person is added at the top of a composite kanji, it is generally written 亠, as in the character 亡, meaning die. (The picture
The process of combining pictographs into new kanji, then stylizing and simplifying them, made the final characters a little more abstract and less pictorially representative than the original pictures, of course, but the form of the original picture is still clearly visible and with just a little imagination on your part the pictures and scenes depicted in the kanji will come alive.
How Japan Borrowed Characters From China
Until the third century A.D., scholars say, the Japanese had no written language
